Alejandro authors new book: Nietzsche and the Drama of Historiobiography

Faculty News

The book "offers an original and unifying interpretation of Nietzsche's entire oeuvre." According to the publisher:

"[Alejandro] traces the evolution of Nietzsche’s thought by analyzing Nietzsche’s complex array of stories and historical narratives and by assessing the importance of each of Nietzsche’s philosophical moves, including his many detours and dead ends.

Alejandro’s analysis places Nietzsche’s stories within a tradition of genealogical theorizing and interprets them in terms of one of Nietzsche’s unique features, his use of “historiobiography.” Historiobiography blends the idea of an attunement with all history with one’s awareness of this attunement. As a mode of philosophizing, it allows Nietzsche to view all of human history as if it runs through his own life and thoughts. He is thus able to feel the anguish of all missed opportunities and yet exult in his own strength in the eternal recurrence of these opportunities. In a tradition of inquiry begun by Socrates, Nietzsche, through his genealogical stories, ends up advocating the paradigm of the philosopher as a physician and philosophy as a kind of self-therapy."

Alejandro is professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In addition to Nietzsche, his research interests include Greek philosophy and tragedies, contemporary liberal theory, and American political thought.